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Overall region experiences slight population loss from 2012 to 2013

One important aspect of understanding a region is to understand its population distribution and demographics. To keep our readers updated on this we regularly update our maps to reflect the most current population statistics.

In this post, 2012 population statistics from the American Community Survey are presented.

Overall, this post will examine the 2012 population numbers for the municipalities located in Southeastern Michigan; this is because 2013 population statistics are not yet available at the local level. However, above we provide a comparison of the counties’ populations from 2012 to 2013. Wayne County experienced the largest decrease from 2012 to 2013, about 47,196 residents left, about 32,000 of those residents left from within the city of Detroit. According to the American Community Survey, every other county lost residents as well, with the exception of Monroe and St. Clair counties. These losses were minute next to the loss experienced in Wayne County. The county that lost the second highest number of residents from 2012 to 2013 was Oakland County; about 4,700 residents left from 2012 to 2013. Monroe County gained 77 residents and St. Clair County gained 62.

Although Detroit’s population has been declining since the early 1960s, it still remains the largest city in both the region, and the state. In 2012, the population was reported to be 721,459, about a 1 percent increase from the population of 713,000 in 2010.

In Wayne County, the City of Detroit was the only municipality in which the population exceeds 100,000. In the seven-county region there were only four municipalities with a population exceeding 100,000– Detroit (721,459), Warren (134,550), Sterling Heights (129,887) and Ann Arbor (114,725). Warren and Sterling Heights are located in Macomb County and Ann Arbor is in Washtenaw County. In Oakland County, where the total population was 1,207,297 in 2012, the municipality with the highest population was the city of Troy (81,307).

The Tri-County Region (Wayne-Oakland-Macomb) contained the largest portion of the population in Southeastern Michigan in 2012, about 84 percent. Livingston, Monroe St. Clair and Washtenaw counties did not have one municipality with a population above 35,000. Washtenaw had just Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti exceeding this figure. In Livingston County, Hamburg Township had the highest population at 21,396. In Monroe County, Bedford Township had the highest population at 31,055. Port Huron had the highest population in St. Clair County at 30,253. As already noted, Ann Arbor had the highest population in Washtenaw County at 114,725.

Since 2010 the overall population in Southeastern Michigan has experienced a population increase, despite decades of population decline, with the city of Detroit falling from the fourth-largest American city in the mid-twentieth century to barely cracking the top 20 today. However, the region is still home to around four million people, and it is second only to Chicago among other Midwestern metropolitan areas.